(Judge Question) Those Dwarves on the 1st level

General ACKS Forums Dwimmermount
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So, the dwarven adventuring party on level 1 confuses me. First, the number of dwarves mentioned in room 68 doesn’t match up with the number of dwarves–although this is relatively easily rectified.

However, the reason for their entrance into the dungeon was to find the dwarven cemetery. They entered through the Stonewrought Stairs and wound up losing some of their number on the other side of the map, despite the fact that the area they were searching for was only a little bit away from their entrance point, AND, (and this is the confusing part), they had a map of the level… Why did they go some 400’ out of their way if they had a map?

I hadn’t realized the confusing implication of these things (their map, their death locations, their goal) until after my players had rescued one of the dwarfs. After the session, I realized how bizarre this evidence seems. Thoughts on possible explanations for this oddity? (Thinking about giving the dwarves really low Ints and having the rescued one–who has joined the party–be constantly lost.)

–Bercilak

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I just had intended the map to simply be a layout of the rooms, not necessarily a description of the rooms.

They decided to explore the dungeon counter-clockwise. That brought them the wrong way (north-east) when they got to Room 28. They took casualties while exploring the north-east quadrant of the map before being captured by orcs when they headed to the north-west quadrant.

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Thanks, Alex. I meant to come back to this post, because I eventually figured this out myself when I started thinking about what kind of map would be created by a wine bottle ink press. In my game, I left the caverns off the map and decided that it was only a map of the “built” part of the dungeon–making the bottle itself of ancient origin, not of dwarven origins.